Jesse, I’m losing my ability to cope with this stuff.  I see that abomination and get so angry I could scream.  And I’m white guy. 

What the hell is wrong with some people?  Who could think this was a good idea?  It’s almost worth believing in Hell if I could believe whoever greenlighted this would be subject to Satan’s tender mercies…

Now I understand just a little of what one of my (Black) friends was saying once. 

She said that whenever she heard about some crime or other bad event in the news, she silently prayed that it wasn’t a POC that was responsible - not because it would be in any way her responsibility, but because of the old guilt by association raising the ambient racism level.

Now there’s some idiots in Utah that have just made white people look bad (again). 

May god damn them…

Good fucking god.

We’re really pretty much over as a country, aren’t we?

Yep, and next we will see the McCain Lego Voodoo Action figure.

Stick pins in it - the arms and legs fall off, and then you can put it back together and do it again!  Comes with a retro flight suit.

This is a surprise? There’s money in it, just like the Hillary nutcracker.

“There’s money in it, just like the Hillary nutcracker.”

...that was bad.  But it would have to have to make her look like a dog or something to be close to this bad…

The racism is disgusting- but the doll itself is adorable.

Bastards…

But who didn’t think this wasn’t funny?

http://www.bushorchimp.com/

I know I chuckled at it.

I know, before I get yelled at it, the doll can be seen to have far more offensive overtones.

Baby mama?

In a weird way, it’s kind of a brilliant slur, because how do you respond?  If you point out that they’re, um, married, you’re buying into the idea that single mothers are second class.  If you attempt a more complex argument, people tune you out.  Like the best wingnut slurs, it leaves liberals sputtering.

Those Mormons are sure funny ppl, always hatching some get-rich-quick scheme.

I think Paul Frank should sue them though:

http://www.paulfrank.com/characters/

I can’t wait till Fox describes Cindy as McCain’s drug addicted trophy wife. Because all’s fair in love and politics, and it all happens to be true.

“Baby mama”? What happened to “vacationing” in Bali? Man, would the right wing noise machine decide whether president Obama is going to be Virgil “They Call Me Mister” Tibbs or the Fresh Prince of Bel Air already? I’m starting to get whiplash here.

What upsets me most is that this takes away from independent Monkey Power.

Monkeys are, as many people will attest, super excellent awesome number one. This cannot be countermanded.

However, monkeys are also a terrible symbolic legacy of the American Holocaust of Racism.

This is extra suck. Perhaps, through socialized re-empowering, control-aware symbolic reappropriation we can take back the unfortunately maligned Eastern symbol of Monky Fu and eventually allow this most all-powerful spirit animal back into our cultural lives.

In other words: I like monkeys and hate racism. What is to be done?

Anyone want to lay odds that someone on Fox News drops an N-bomb between now and November? Or will Pat Buchanan do it first?

“The racism is disgusting- but the doll itself is adorable”

they ddint make a doll for bush b/c no one wants to hug a baboon. (& they didnt know which end to put his face on)

The “American Holocaust of racism”?  I guess they are --but I’m pretty sure the racist association of black people with monkeys came from European scientists such as Ernst Haeckel, no?

Anyway, SGEW, many people “like monkeys and hate racism.” You can have all the monkey posters, plush monkeys, and monkey documentaries you want so long as you don’t characterize people of color as monkeys, right?  It’s not the animal but the association that’s a problem.

OK, from a commenter at the other blog, here is the person making the dolls:

Thank Teh Google
http://www.davidjlawson.com/
From Open Secrets:
LAWSON, DAVID J MR
PARK CITY,UT 84060 PRUDENTIAL UTAH REAL ESTATE/REALTOR 3/31/07 $2,300 Romney, Mitt (R)

You may want to let him know exactly why the product is offensive.

I’m waiting for the McCain monkey doll that looks like Cranky Kong.

Incertus--

I’m betting that McCain will say the word “mulatto” to refer to Obama in a video that will be posted on YouTube before the election is over.

Count on it.

Re: Faux News’ “Baby Mama”....

Note that the caption reads “OUTRAGED LIBERALS: STOP PICKING ON OBAMA’S BABY MAMA!” so the phrase has been put in the mouths of “outraged liberals.”

I, too, expect the “N” word to come up, but I think they’ll manage to find some way to suggest taht African American Obama supporters use it, so they can both dogwhistle their racist fanboys and suggests that liberals and Black people themselves are the real racists.

I have to agree with Chadwick. That thing is horrifyingly cute.

Remember “Bros before Hos”, Citizens United Not Timid”, “Hillary Nutcrackers”?

Remember all the anti-Hillary slurs thrown out there by some of the “Obamababies”?

Did you think your lad would be exempt from racism?

All of the misogynistic “pundits”, campaign workers, “leaders”, etc. etc., etc., who twisted, misquoted, misread, plain flat out lied about Hillary — did you think the Republican Smear Machine wasn’t going to get tough with your choice?

You made Hillary into a “racist” - no matter what she said.  Now, the real Racists are on the move — and they don’t give a damn what you think.

My suggestion is — deal with it.  The shoes on the other foot now.  Your outrage doesn’t mean a thing to these SOB’s — they get off on your anger — waiting for you to make a mistake.  It’s been a winning formula before.  Unless you know how to fight back EFFECTIVELY, they will have you on the run.

Tina,

As you note, there was plenty of outrageous misogyny thrown Clinton’s way.  Most Obama supporters admitted as much; many actively denounced it. And I doubt very much that any Obama supporters are surprised by the “real racists,” even if many were surprised by the Clinton campaign’s willingness to engage in dogwhistle appeals to real racists (and, sorry, no amount of misogyny thrown at Clinton nor “real racism” from those on the right excuses that kind of behavior).

I also wouldn’t worry about Obama’s fighting back effectively. So far, the Obama campaign has been a lot more effective at parrying attacks--reasonable and unreasonable--than the Clinton campaign was. It’s one of the main reasons that he won the nomination.

We’ve had these things a long time http://www.looptvandfilm.com/blog/bush_chimp_address.jpg

http://www.wacitonline.net/images/funny/bush_chimp.jpg

There are whole sites on the phenomenon.  So wev.

Rather than send anything to him, perhaps our concerns would be better sent to Prudential Real Estate - I would guess that they don’t want to be linked to this sort of racism…

Email just sent to

Dear Sirs,

One of your agents in Utah has started a side business selling depictions of Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama as a ‘monkey in a suit’…

This has reached the blogs and is understandably causing some uproar.

I’ll bet anything that keeping this racist contracted with Prudential will get you a spot on Keith Olbermnan’s “Worst Persons” list.

That will be great publicity for Prudential, eh?  “Prudential is still represented by this guy, even after they became aware of his racist mockery of a presidential candidate...” That’s going to resonate.

Here is a link to one of the blogs with comments.

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/watch_out_for_that_tree/

here is a link to the “product”
http://www.thesockobama.com/index.html

Here is link to the agents Prudential RE site

http://www.davidjlawson.com/

Well done, Snooky.

Have you actually SENT this email to MSNBC and KO, though? Give it a try; I’d like to see them expose this asshole.

<snark>But… I thought racism in America was all in the past? Didn’t we get rid of it in, like, 1963 or something? So this can’t be racist. Besides, who doesn’t like monkeys?</snark>

You’re right, Arky--it was wrong to refer to GWB as a chimp (I’ve known some chimps in my time, and none of them started a preemptive war on false pretenses, or tortured anyone).

And pretending Obama is a monkey is no more offensive--or wouldn’t be, if it were not for the history of racism over the last 500 years or so.

Honestly, do you really think calling Bush a chimp was racist?

Thanks Arky for reminding us just how clueless wingnuts can be.  Sometimes we forget…

Now, the real Racists are on the move — and they don’t give a damn what you think.

I love how women and liberals are magically exempt from being “real racists”. 

All racists are real racists.

All people who use racism for political advancement are racist.

The Clintons, as much as I generally like them, showed their “real” racism in the primary campaign.

And, no, the fact that these monkey doll wankers exist doesn’t make the Clintons any less racist , any more than the existence of the Klan makes my non-hate-group-affiliated stepfather’s racial slurs any more acceptable.

2 nights ago, I was thinking of making just this thing, to beat the racists to the punch.  Its pretty clear we are headed deeper into the swamps, after the curious george t shirt.

http://www.parkrecord.com/todayseditorial

And above is the url of the editorial page of the Park City newspaper.  There is a comments section on the editorial page - race you?  one two three.... go!

Some jackass in Utah is harldy the Republican Smear Machine at work.  Don’t put any else in this guy’s boat.  He’s a jerk, call him out.  But paint the picture fairly.  There has been a lot more racism shown from the Democratic Party to date in this campaign.

“There has been a lot more racism shown from the Democratic Party to date in this campaign.”

...which I suspect isn’t true, but lets go with it. 

It was only last week that Clinton gave up.  Since McCain had his nom in the bag months ago, the only action has been on the Democratic side anyway.

Now that Obama’s got it, everything will come out.

And, btw, if you don’t think smears accusing Obama of being a “secret Muslim”, or belonging to a “radical Christian” church don’t have overwhelmingly large racist components in them, you just haven’t been paying attention. There is an overt or covert racial reference in just about everything that has so far been thrown at Obama…

As far as the Hillary nutcracker goes, if she had won the nomination, that would have been the Christmas gift for my Republican father and brother.  Given the hard time they gave me in 2000 and how well that’s turned out, they would have deserved it.  And where did I see the nutcracker and complaints about how sexist it was?  Right here on Pandagon.

Nice to see the Oppression Olympics is still going on.  Apparently if the media expressed sexism towards Hillary and we complained about it, that means we’re not allowed to complain about racism in the media.  Or something.  I’m not very clear on what Tina’s point was.

“There has been a lot more racism shown from the Democratic Party to date in this campaign.”

If, by “racism,” you mean, “the candidate knows black people who are still pissed off about slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow,” then yes, the “racism” in this campaign has come from the Obama campaign, although an objective observer might find that interpretation of the word, “racism,” rather strange.

At least the Hillary nutcracker has *some* potential for being taken as signifying a positive quality. There’s nothing gender-specific about being a ball buster, and it’s not hard to imagine someone respecting and appreciating that quality in a coach, teacher, or mentor.

Sure, many/most people will see it as signifying that she’s an emasculating bitch. But I could see British Tories buying Margaret Thatcher nutcrackers out of love and respect. Or young liberal women in the press corps buying Helen Thomas nutcrackers in honor of her putting the Bush administration through the wringer.

For all that Hillary is touted as a fighter, I’m somewhat surprised that the nutcracker wasn’t embraced by her fans.

On the other hand, it’s awfully hard to project a positive interpretation to something which presents a black candidate as a monkey.

Hm.  I like Obama, and I like monkeys. . . But I really really don’t like that.  For half a second I was thinking hey, maybe this could be a good moment to repurpose this whole imagery, play up the popularity of cute monkeys to draw people into the Obama campaign and maybe make that monkey reference something different (you know, instead of ‘Obama is like a monkey because black people are unevolved and animalistic’ push the ‘Obama is like a monkey because they are both awesome and appeal to lots of people’), maybe erase that nasty and pernicious viewpoint.  But… man, that racist bullshit has quite a deep and entrenched legacy, and I just don’t think it’s possible.  How ugly.

SockObama is really hard to believe. Utah is one of the most conservative and REPUBLICAN places in the country (we are liberals living in Utah county) I can’t see this as anything other than an attempt to both cash-in ($$$) on Obama mania AND send a racist message. As white as Utah is, there is no way that anyone could be so completely tone deaf and innocently ignorant of the racist iconography this product represents.

Here is some genuine Barack boosterism to counter balance this craven move. My wife has been working her heart out for the Obama campaign in the west and has just been elected as a national delegate from Utah to the Democratic National Convention for Barack Obama. She is a sculptor and has created Barack Obama pendants and key chains to help raise money for her trip to Denver (she is also donating a portion of the proceeds to the Obama campaign). Please check out her Website: appleday.com.

Jesse,

Where were you when your compadres were referring to the current president as “smirking chimp” and a whole host of other names?

This is the problem you face: What’s good for the goose doesn’t seem to be good for the gander if the gander is a Democrat.

Please grow up

“Where were you when your compadres were referring to the current president as “smirking chimp” and a whole host of other names?”

...because, of course, comparing an overprivileged idiot like Bush to a primate is EXACTLY as bad as comparing Obama to one...unless you have more than two functioning braincells.

“Robert Zimmerman” - have you ever actually lived in the US?  Did you just wake up from a coma?  Do you have an undiagnosed brain tumor?

***

On the off chance you’re serious, a simple question, Mr. troll:  Just exactly how blatant would the racism have to be before you actually accepted that it’s racism?  Or are you one of those who believes racism was officially over in the 1960’s?…

“Robert Zimmerman”?  OMG.  Jesse comes back, and then one of the vintage trolls from the Jesse era at Pandagon rises from whatever cesspool he occupied for the last 3 years (and pretending to be Bob Dylan is particularly silly).